Eula, Dirk says. You escaped.

22

To see Dirk then, standing still as the sky unloaded, his stoic face wet with sweat and rain and tears now, too, to see him at the precise moment of comprehension, would have been enough to change any Gobliner’s opinion of the face of the zoo and the House.

He stepped forward at last, his boots heavy and wet, and headed back to the tour’s starting point. A sign there said:

this is the place alright!

Dirk stared at it. How many times had he seen this sign? When was the last time he read it? A profound sadness filled the infinitesimal spaces of his brain like grout. He touched the sign, as though saying goodbye to it, and headed inside.

Once there, he approached the tools. He had his end-of-the-shift duties to take care of before leaving to meet up with Patrick for the much-needed night out. He had to take some trash out. Mop up a bit. Wipe some surfaces. Clean some glass. He performed these tasks quietly, hardly thinking of them at all. The place was empty as his co-workers were either already on their way home or beyond Dirk’s range of hearing. Dirk didn’t speak. He kept his eye on his work. Whatever he was feeling could bloom, if he let it, into relief. He had a vague idea that he’d been through Hell and was now making the right changes. But he was worried that if he wasn’t careful, the feeling could snap back at him, blossom into something blacker than the Hell he’d already been through. He had a vision of himself falling down a flight of stairs in that darkness, all mixed up and broken on the floor of Hell’s cellar.

There was a little more cleaning to do, a few notes to be made in the tour log. He had to leave his uniform by the laundry. Make sure the lights were off. Wipe the muck from his boots. And…

And there was an animal to kill.

Yes, a job the boss had told him about this morning, at the head of the shift. Dirk hardly listened to him when he said it, knowing the job inside out. It was as if the boss could’ve said Hey, Dirk, and Dirk wouldn’t have needed another word for clarification.

And wasn’t that why he was quitting in the first place? Wasn’t it a bad thing when your job became so routine you didn’t even have to listen to the instructions your boss gave you?

One more animal. Okay.

He opened the equipment locker. At first the tools confused him. Like they were new tools. Different. Strange shapes, odd angles.

Dirk took the scythe and lumbered toward his final act. The many events from his nightmare were shrunk now to the size of a birthday present.

His mind was clean.